Couple with bike at the Salzach | © Tourismus Salzburg
Salzburg and traditional costume
Wearing a dirndl or lederhosen in Salzburg is a mark of style and class. Whether at work, for a stroll through the market or to attend a Salzburg Festival performance – here traditional costume is considered good form. With some 20 makers of traditional costumes and specialist stores, the town is a shopping paradise for enthusiasts.
Enjoy shopping in Salzburg's Old Town
On a walk through Salzburg, it soon becomes clear: traditional fashion confidently holds its own beside international fashion trends. Traditional costume makers and creative young designers experiment with fabrics, patterns and trend colours, constantly developing the look. Today, you can wear what you like.
Since 1946, the Salzburger Heimatwerk has been devoted to the conservation, maintenance and development of traditions. Young designers such as Tanja Pflaum from Ploom or Constanze Kurz from Hanna Trachten interpret classic traditional fashion in refreshingly unconventional styles aimed to appeal to very young target groups. The fashion-conscious will find traditional costume as high-end haute couture at stores including Madl, Forstenlechner, Trachten Wenger, Moser and Trachten Stassny. Specialists for hand-made, elaborately embroidered custom-made items are the Salzburger Heimatwerk, Trachtenmoden Lanz and the Beuerle workshop. If you don't want a completely traditional costume, you can pep up your outfit with accessories such as knitted cardigans, silk scarves or traditional jewellery.
Events as a platform for customs and costumes
At folkloric events, traditional costume is displayed in all its seasonal variations – whether traditional at the annual maypole raising in spring, formal and elegant at the opening festivities for the Salzburg Summer Festival or the Jedermann performance in the Cathedral Square, young and fresh at the Rupertikirtag [town fair] in autumn, or eclectic at the Salzburg Adventsingen.
The history of traditional fashion in Salzburg
Dirndl, lederhosen and jacket were once the traditional clothes worn by the rural population. Everyday wear for a woman was a plain cotton working dirndl, on feast-days and for church a festive costume of brocade, silk or velvet. With the emergence of tourism in the mid-19th century, together with the fashion for the summer retreat, traditional costume also became familiar in towns. It symbolised joie de vivre and the lightness of being, away from everyday life. This custom was enhanced after Max Reinhardt and Hugo von Hofmannsthal founded the Salzburg Festival, and it was considered chic to wear traditional costume – it was even worn on stage in Max Reinhardt's 1933 Faust production. The Sound of Music has made a huge contribution to familiarising the world with Salzburg's local costumes: whether at home or on stage, Maria Augusta von Trapp liked to wear a dirndl, and in both film and stage productions, dirndl, lederhosen and Haferlschuhe [robust working shoes] played an important role.
Prominent names continue to fill the order books of traditional businesses: Emperor Franz Joseph I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Herbert von Karajan, Elizabeth Taylor, Billy Wilder, Pablo Picasso, Helmut Kohl, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Caroline von Monaco, Queen Beatrix, Placido Domingo, the Rothschild, Oppenheimer and Flick families, Louis Vuitton and many more famous names were or are avowed aficionados of traditional Salzburg fashion.
